Jerusalem & Athens

The words "faith", "belief" and "trust" are assumed to be ideals and virtues one ought to admire and strive to posses. This notion is especially true when it comes to religion and is understood to be a fundamental principle in the world view of the religious person. However, between the constructive and healthy form of faith and destructive and senseless gullibility, lies a very thin line. Many a religious person, motivated by zeal and devotion for their respective path, have crossed this line. There are even groups and sects which have come to demonize reason all together and have turned "baseless belief" and "blind faith" into the ideal way of life. It is thus imperative to properly establish and define the proper place for faith and belief in our lives and to understand exactly where and how it ought to be inculcated within our world view. But first we must lay down some foundations. These will allow us to proceed with a fra...

I have long struggled with the idea of belief. I have never understood it's definition or it's purpose. If belief is based on concrete observation or irrefutable logic then why call it belief; it is knownledge. And if belief is irational, if it means to accept something as true without any evidence, then what is it based on and why is it a good thing? It has become clear to me that baseless belief or blind faith is simply stupidity. Anyone that claims a given fact to be true without any evidence, simply because they believe it, is acting foolishly. So what then does it mean to believe? What place, if any, does belief have in our lives? I would like to suggest the following theory. People misunderstand and misuse the vital role of belief. They expect it to function as a tool for uncovering or discerning truth and use it as such. The truth is however, it was never meant for that.  Belief was never meant to be the mechanism by which we find or establish truths ; instead it...

Every religion is based on a certain number of beliefs. Belief in G-d, belief in prophecy etc. But what is belief? The inquiry into the nature of belief is best captured in the following two-sided question: Is belief rational or irrational? Meaning, is it a conviction one acquires from real observation and logical reasoning or is it a conviction one simply has as a result of a higher sense or spiritual Intuition? Saadia Gaon, in his famous “Haemunos Vhadeos”, is a proponent of the first approach. He does not subscribe to the mystical or spiritual notion of belief. To him, any set of beliefs must be firmly grounded on human observation or concrete rational reasoning. Any idea which cannot be corroborated by either experience or logic should be rejected.  Thus, he deals at length in his introduction with the proper methods of acquiring beliefs and the rigid set of tests one should put every idea through before accepting it as truth. Here is a summary (in my...

Modern scientific evolutionary theory and the Tanya (Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Chabad) both seem to have arrived at a very similar conclusion. How they get there, however, is an entirely different story. Every self reflecting human being no doubt sees that we possess a complicated and paradoxical set of traits. On the one hand we are beastly, but on the other hand, cultured and civilized. We enjoy base and materialistic pleasures but also have a fine taste for the arts and wisdom. Evolutionary theory explains this phenomenon quite simply. Man was (and basically still is) an animal. We lived in the jungle where we hunted and gathered food for survival. We spoke no language, possessed no moral code and knew nothing of the arts and fashion which form our culture. It was only after many millions of years that this beast called man learned to speak, think, write, and turned itself into the fine cultured and civilized ape he is today. This explains the dichotomy within our characte...